Travelling Light? – I don’t think so.

There are a number of rules in life that you ignore at your peril. Not least of these is the one that states no matter how lightly you attempt to travel, unless you are on your own, other travellers have a completely different concept of “light”.

This is exacerbated if a grandson’s birthdays is involved and your wife has you down as the designated carrier. With that information you have no doubt already identified some of the challenges I have faced over the last couple of days.

Oh, and to make totally sure that any heavy lifting was coming my way, Da Boss reminded me of her recent bad back, which clearly ruled out any but the lightest of manoeuvring. Let’s just say that in the past 24 hours I have heaved, shoved, lifted, twisted and grunted in a manner that any half decent wrestler would have been proud of.

I have however, failed to elicit even the faintest hint of praise from Da Boss, after all, she reminded me fairly often,”It’s rare for you to lift even a darned finger, so if anything You are merely re-balancing things!”

Needless to say that was not at all appreciated as I lugged two cases which had clearly been filled with ballast or lead or even a dead body, down two of the longest and deepest stairways in Stockholm’s Central Station. Of course there was probably a lift somewhere, but I was damned if I had been able to spot it and as rush hour was approaching the only thing I wanted to do was skedaddle to our destination as quickly as possible.

If you ally to this Da Boss’s unerring inability to know where she is or where she is going (purely geographically) and I was expected to marry up my portering duties with those of navigator, and translator all the while smiling sweetly!

Sadly I failed on all counts on more than one occasion and had to be rebuked for my attitude at least twice. I figure that I am currently earning huge amounts of time off from my stay in Purgatory and do expect St Peter to have made extra careful note in his book about my overall performance.

Now, to be fair I compounded the situation myself by bringing a vintage wall clock in my hand luggage as a housewarming present. The fact that the weights for it accounted for a couple of extra kilos in our baggage was a bad start.

It also did confuse and concern the security check in at Manchester airport. They clearly had not encountered anyone carrying a 1950’s mechanical clock in their hand luggage – and it certainly set off a series of alarm bells as it was scanned and re-scanned. Eventually they decided that anyone stupid enough to carry something like that through was unlikely to be clever enough to be a threat to anyone.

So it was, that a day and a half after leaving home, we finally poled up at our destination. Never has it been such a delight to see our family and to know that the burden had been lifted from my shoulders! Hurrah!

I have however made a solemn vow. I will only carry a maximum of two bags on any future travels with my leader, and Da Boss is to be limited to just one. I don’t care if the airlines offer to carry two three or four bags extra for free. Unless they match that with a door to door service they can go whistle.

Having said all this, everything was forgotten in an instant as we were greeted by the biggest smile in the world and Boo started to work his magic on us, ably assisted by his little sister, Lolly. Clearly everything had been worth it after all!

But please accept that I may revise my opinion in the morning if my back has seized up completely.